ICC T20 WORLD CUP 2021

October 25, 2021

Shane Burger

Sharjah Stadium

Scotland

Post Match Media Conference

Afghanistan 190/4 (20) - Scotland 60(10.2)

Q. What's the immediate reaction after that?

SHANE BURGER: Yeah, only tough to swallow. We've had really good momentum recently. So you get into a rhythm of what that feels like, and look, that will be really tough to swallow.

But this competition doesn't allow you to think about it for too long. We have another game in a couple days' time. We have to regroup and reset and to go against Namibia. We would have learned a lot from this evening. The game is all about small margins, fine margins at times, and we didn't quite get momentum on our side this evening, and they just showed that with a few of their world-class players, they were able just to pile on the pressure at the right times and in T20 cricket, that can happen. It can go against.

Q. You mentioned fine margins. Did you feel like you maybe got on the wrong end of a couple of pretty tight decisions in Mujeeb's second over?

SHANE BURGER: Yeah, sometimes those things can go your way. Look, I'm not here to speak about decisions because I feel sometimes you make your own luck. But when those small and fine decisions go against you, it's really hard to get back into the game. And with the quality that they have, they just keep piling on the pressure and they keep coming at you.

Look, as I mentioned, we'll just learn a lot from that and we've got to be able to just manage those situations a little bit better.

Q. Felt like with their batting they except the pressure on with left/right combo so someone could always target the short boundary. Could you speak about their batting approach and how hard it was to counter?

SHANE BURGER: Yeah, for a long period of time now, that's the way they played. It's a brand of cricket that they play. You can speak about it as much as you want; you can train for it as much as you want, but until you get in there and you actually see what they do and how they play. You know, quite often we can be a little bit reactive where I suppose we wanted to be a little bit more proactive. Hit better lengths and take pace on when required, manage the small boundary and the big boundary which we spoke about,.

But tonight the execution just wasn't quite there. As we mentioned we'll learn from it. We'll get better. Take it into the next game and make sure that we know all those things that we got wrong.

Q. You do not look like the team who played Bangladesh in the first round, and what went wrong? Had the pitch become unplayable or we should conclude that spin -- not used to playing only spin pitches and it can be your weakness?

SHANE BURGER: Yeah, again, Bangladesh was a long time ago. On that particular evening, we got our plans right. We had momentum swing our way and that's just what the game of cricket sometimes presents you. On an evening like tonight, things changed really quickly. We actually got off to a great start and we were on target to chase.

We played brave cricket. We were going after the target, and then suddenly one over or a couple of things happen to you and it changes the momentum pretty classically. To recover from that doesn't quite often happen in T20 cricket. It can happen. This evening, it didn't happen.

You know, we'll take a lot from a few things that we did really well this evening. I thought Mark Watt bowled excellently, and we'll make sure that we take that momentum into the next couple of games.

But we need to forget about this pretty quickly, put it aside and regroup and go again.

Q. What did you think about that pitch?

SHANE BURGER: I think it was a used wicked. We watched the game the only night and saw that chasing -- they chased 170 on that wicket. So par could have been 170 again on that wicket. It did grip a little bit. It just slowed down. So if you bowled really good lengths and took pace off when required and got a bit of momentum going your way, par could have been maybe less than that.

So either way, we were still confident we could have chased that target. The lads watching into the hut said that's chaseable and we're definitely going to do our best going for that target. The mindset was good. As I mentioned previously, just the execution at times wasn't quite there.

Q. Mujeeb and Rashid have played at the highest level, played in some of the biggest leagues in front of thousands of fans, watched by millions of people at home. Scotland haven't had that experience. Do you think that's what maybe proved a bit decisive, the experience, in the end?

SHANE BURGER: It plays a huge role. When you're able to play cricket all the time against some of the world's best players on the biggest stage, you're only going to keep getting better.

So our leg spinner would have learnt a lot from what Rashid did this evening, and I saw them having a chat after the game, and that was great from him to hand over that experience and keep building him up.

Look, we have got some world-class players on our team. But given more opportunity, given more time in the middle under pressure like this evening, I have no doubt that our performances will keep being more consistent.

And I don't think tonight's loss defines us as a team or defines them as individuals. I just think it's a game of cricket where things turn pretty quickly, and you know, character is defined by how you come back from something like this.

Q. Is the rest of the tournament like an opportunity for these players to put themselves in the shop window for these big franchise tournaments?

SHANE BURGER: Yeah, definitely. We have spoken about it. But more importantly, it's an opportunity as a team to keep going out and beating teams that that we believe we can beat. We've set a few goals for this stage of the tournament. We are in waters we've never been in before.

But that doesn't mean we can't stick to what's going really well for us and keep believing that we can go out and put some n some big performances which we've shown in the recent past. So tonight won't stop us, and it's just a mere little hurdle to where we want to get to.